Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Four Ways to Optimize Your Triathlon Training

An
early morning alarm, a drowsy head, a slow moving body, and a busy work day can
quickly have you looking for inventive ways to get in more training, without mentioning
having to take the kids to soccer in the evenings and then do homework. These
things all combine to make it tough to train the way you want. You’re busy,
your life is busy, your emails sometimes overwhelm you, and yet you have goals.
Those goals include triathlon racing. Maybe it’s not a full ironman this year (or
maybe it is), but whatever the goal, one thing is certain: you have to plan,
organize, and use your limited time more efficiently than ever. It’s a lesson
that triathlon teaches us all. The lazy days of sitting around watching the
grass grow and getting the trivial things done in life are long over. Time is your
most precious commodity.

One
of the key reasons you should use your power meter is to make your cycling
training highly time efficient and effective, especially as you challenge
yourself more and more in this amazing sport. I’ve got four ways to use your
power meter to cut out “fluff” miles, get focused on the training that will
make a difference, and ensure you have time for running and swimming.

1. Optimize daily workouts. One of the most
important benefits of training with your power meter is that it brings focus to
your workouts. By riding in precisely the training levels that will give you
the improvement you want and make you the fastest possible, you can reduce your
training time.

Before
embarking on this highly directed training, however, you need to decide if you
are in the “survive” group or in the “thrive” group. The “survivors” are just
doing the triathlon to finish it and have fun without ending up on TV highlight
reels as they crawl to the line on bloody knees. The “thrivers” are focused on
a new PR, aim to win their age group (or a top placing), and have long since
passed mere survival days. If you’re a survivor, spend your training time in
two levels: tempo and threshold power.

If
you’re a thriver, you need to spend your training time in three levels: tempo,
threshold, and Vo2max. Tempo power is defined by riding between 76% and 90% of
your functional threshold power (FTP). FTP is the best average power you can
maintain for one hour, so you will need to test your FTP first, either with a
full one-hour time trial or by doing a 20-minute time trial and then
subtracting 5% off of your watts. Once you’ve found your FTP, you can determine
your tempo level, which is where you’ll want to spend a majority of your
training time. Why? Tempo is harder than endurance pace and will challenge your
aerobic/cardiovascular system to improve and become more efficient. By riding
at this pace you can ride shorter distances than your event. You’ll also be
assured that on race day you’ll be able to drop the pace down a notch to a more
reasonable endurance pace and have plenty left in the tank for a great bike and
then a super run. Stated more simply, a two-hour ride at tempo is worth three
and half hours at endurance pace, a three-hour ride at tempo pace is worth five
hours at endurance pace, and so on. Increase your intensity and reduce your
volume, using your power meter to confirm that you are indeed in your tempo
pace for the time needed. Tempo isn’t easy, but that’s exactly why you need to
do it and why it allows you to reduce your training time. Start out with 30- to
45-minute blocks of riding at tempo pace before moving up into 60, 90, 120, etc.
blocks at tempo so you can build up and handle the pace.

If
you’re a thriver, you need to spend more time at the upper ranges of tempo,
which is called the “sweet spot” range and correlates roughly with 88-93% of
your FTP. This is even more intense, and the more time you can spend here, the
higher your FTP will rise and the faster you’ll go. Again, start out with
shorter 30- to 45-minute blocks at sweet spot and build up in time.

The
other training level you have to ride in as either a survivor or a thriver is
the threshold level. This is an even higher intensity than tempo and is
associated with 91-105% of your FTP. Do shorter intervals in this level, with
10 minutes being the shortest and 30 minutes being the longest. The purpose of
threshold intervals is to push your FTP higher and higher, since essentially
that is your fitness determiner. The more fit you are, the higher your FTP is,
and that is the number one factor for riding the fastest bike split.

If
you’re a thriver, you’ll also need to spend a day every two weeks doing a
Vo2max workout in order to improve your “top end.” Vo2 max is the training
level that focuses on improving your body’s ability to better utilize the
oxygen that you take into your lungs and move into your blood stream to the
working muscles. While your absolute Vo2 max is a genetically determined amount
(there’s only so much room inside those ribs of yours), you can improve your
velocity at Vo2 max by doing intervals from 3 to 8 minutes at a high intensity
level of 106% to 120% of your FTP. I recommend that you start out with 7 x 3
minutes at 115% of FTP with 5 minutes recovery between each and then work up to
6 x 5 minutes or 5 x 8 minutes.

2. Do the right amount of intervals. Your power
meter allows you to determine the optimal number of intervals you should do. It
is important to do just enough intervals to exhaust the energy system you’re
training and not so many that you take away from your other training in the
pool or out on the run. One of the ways to do this is by doing what I call intervals
to exhaustion (ITE). ITE is the concept of continuing to do interval repeats
until you can no longer produce enough watts to elicit the proper training
response in the physiological system you’re training. ITE is based on your
average watts from the third interval, and typically you’ll stop the interval
session when your power drops off about 5-12% (depending on the length of the
interval) from the average watts in that third interval. See Figure 1 below for
a guideline on when to stop doing intervals, and check out the book I wrote
with Dr. Coggan, Training and Racing with
a Power Meter, for a more in-depth discussion on ITE.

To
increase your fitness, you have to push yourself a little farther than before in
your interval repeat sessions. If you normally do five intervals, then using
the ITE concept can help give you the confidence you need to keep doing more
intervals until they aren’t being effective anymore. Should you do six repeats?
Ten repeats? Four? With a power meter and the ITE concept, you can easily
determine the exact optimal number of repeats needed for maximum training
adaptation and time efficiency.

Figure 1: Hunter's Interval Guidelines

3. Forget the easy days. You’re on a
time schedule. You don’t have time for putting around spinning the legs in
active recovery. This is a waste of your time. Sleep, rest, do a yoga class, or
get a massage. Forget the easy days. They aren’t really helping you to improve
your fitness. While active recovery does have some benefits in helping you
recover more quickly for the next workout, you need to fully rest one day a
week and do nothing. That is a more effective use of your limited time, plus it
allows you to catch up around the house on things that need to be done.

4. Train for the specific demands of the
event.
Plan your training around the demands of your event. If you’re doing a hilly
triathlon, train in the hills as much as you can. If you’re doing a flat
triathlon, forget the hills and focus on your power on the flats. If your race
is an Olympic distance event, ride extra so you can easily reach your goal, but
no ironman type rides are needed. The demands of the event will dictate a good
portion of your training focus, and in many cases it’s best to work backward
from the event demands themselves to help you be more time efficient with the
type of training you do. For example, if you have an Olympic distance race
coming up and the course has three 2-minute hills on it and one 8-minute hill,
you’ll need to do those in training so you can prepare for that specific
effort. Of course, even shorter obstacles will need to be accounted for as
well, like accelerating out of corners and popping over short bumps. Reminder:
the general demands of the event can’t be forgotten either, so make sure you
adhere to step 1 above.

Time
is a great equalizer and a great differentiator; it allows each of us to time as
efficiently as possible, and those who have more time will generally have more
fitness. You have the opportunity to push your limits within your own time
constraints, and becoming highly efficient with your training time will make a
difference in your finishing position and possibly your race success. Time for
more time.

Hunter Allen is a USA
Cycling Level 1 coach and former professional cyclist. He is the coauthor of Training
and Racing with a Power Meter, co-developer
of TrainingPeaks’ WKO software, and CEO and founder of Peaks Coaching Group. He
and his coaches create custom training plans for all levels of athletes. Hunter
can be contacted directly through www.PeaksCoachingGroup.com.